A Margin That Will Be Hard To Marginalize

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Obama Wins S.C.: Now What?

The Post's Shailagh Murray discusses Barack Obama's victory in the South Carolina Democratic Primary and what his campaign is expected to do next.

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The campaign now moves forward with a clear set of assets and disadvantages heading into Super Tuesday on Feb. 5, when millions of voters will go to the polls in California, New York, Illinois and 21 other states.

Obama has, it appears, secured a solid base among African Americans, despite the fondness that many black voters had for Bill Clinton, and despite early uncertainty among many African Americans about whether Obama was a viable candidate or whether they could identify with the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother. He will count on this base to deliver strong showings in the four Southern states that vote on Feb. 5 -- he headed last night to Macon, Ga., and today will visit Birmingham, Ala. -- as well as to help him compete in big states such as California, New York and New Jersey.

At the same time, though, Obama will strive to prove in states such as Kansas, Colorado and North Dakota that he continues to hold appeal for white voters in "red state" areas, such as rural Iowa, where he ran close to even with Clinton and Edwards, and rural Nevada, where he outperformed Clinton. And he will try to cut into Clinton's large advantage among Hispanic voters, which advisers in both campaigns agree is due partly to historic tensions between blacks and Hispanics.

The main challenge will be time: Obama was able to win such broad support in Iowa after months of campaigning there, and he won backing from Hispanic voters in Illinois after similarly lengthy exposure. That will not be possible in the next 10 days. "One of the advantages we had in Iowa was that we had enormous time for people to become familiar with me," Obama said at a news conference last week. "We're going to have to translate those favorable impressions into a much more compressed political schedule. That's a challenge we hope to meet."

For now, Obama supporters in South Carolina are relieved that he was able to achieve a victory of such proportions that it will be hard for the opposition to play it down. Many supporters were dismayed that there was even a chance that a win could be discounted on the basis of his strong backing from black voters. They noted that Obama had to work hard to win those voters, many of whom were backing Clinton only a few months ago, and that the surge in turnout was not simply a matter of identity politics, but also the result of a strong grass-roots organization.

As for Obama's weaker performance among white voters in the state, his supporters argued that this overlooked the presence of Edwards, who was born in South Carolina and who captured 40 percent of white voters but drew virtually no support among blacks.

For the Clinton campaign to try to "translate an Obama victory into a defeat, that's absurd," Joe Kelly, an English professor at the College of Charleston, said yesterday. "It really bothers me that they would do that."

The large margin of victory gave heart to those such as Mary Baise, a telecommunications saleswoman in Beaufort who hoped that the results would not be interpreted in demographic breakdowns alone.

"I hope people see that African Americans are standing beside him for who he is, not because he's African American," she said after a rally on Thursday. "I'm hoping they'll see things other than color."